Summary: Natalie Bright will provide an overview of the 2016 Legislative Session; the issues discussed which impacted the HR professional and effective approaches to advocating on the HR issues. In addition, speaker will provide an overview of the 2016 Elections and potential impacts outcomes will have on the Kansas Legislature and the issues they will address in 2017. The presentation will allow the HR professional to:

Become better educated on the state legislative candidates that support the HR community and its legislative initiatives.

Biography: Natalie Bright has more than twenty years of experience lobbying on behalf of Kansas business and associations at the state and federal levels. Her expertise is in lobbying business issues, specifically in the areas of taxation, human resources, insurance, judicial reform and transportation.

Natalie has a joint degree in business administration and political science from the University of California-Riverside. She received her law degree from Washburn School of Law in 1998 and began lobbying for the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and Industry during the 1998 Legislative Session. In 1999, she left the Chamber to work as a contract lobbyist. In 2008, she joined her law school classmate, Marlee Carpenter, and opened her current firm.

Natalie is active in a variety of statewide business coalitions and has been part of several reform efforts including recent workers’ compensation, immigration, unemployment compensation and health care reform efforts. During her career, she has worked on several key pieces of legislation including the 2012 Workers Compensation Reforms, which passed unanimously and the most recent Kansas Unemployment Insurance Compensation Reforms. She is licensed to practice law in state of Kansas and resides in Shawnee, Kan. with her husband Kevin and four children.